MBARI receives and processes raw satellite data directly from
the NOAA (AVHRR)
and SeaStar(SeaWiFS)
Satellites. The signal is received through a Telonics
1.5 meter dish, located in the geodome next to the MBARI volleyball court.
Data from the dish is processed in the communications room by the HP workstation
FOAM. All of the data processing and control system hardware is located
in a single rack enclosure, next to the communication room door. For more
information, click on Satellite
Control and Processing.

The workstation FOAM runs the antenne controler, the data aquisition
system, and a series of scripts written to distribute, archive and process
SeaWiFS and AVHRR data. For SeaWiFS data, the raw encrypted signal
is recived from the antenne, fed through the reciver card and into
the Orbital Science Sea Star ground
processor via a 9 pin ribbon cable. Decoded, raw LO
data then returns through the ribbon and is injested into the system. From
this point, the L0 data is then processed to L1A
radiance data and stored on FOAM. (this code is further described here
.) The L1A data is picked up each day by NASA, and processed
into L2
water leaving radiance data, and is then stored at a NASA ftp site. Each
night the MBARI system retrieves the finished L2 data, and feeds it into
the BOG
SeaWiFS Processing system. Using SeaDas and IDL, this system produces
the chlorophyll,
K490, and true color maps found on the MBARI web site.

For AVHRR Sea Surface Temperature (SST) data, satellite telemetry is
received, processed and stored via the MBARI satellite system. This system
produces the images found on the MBARI home page. To create the SST
products published on the MBARI BOG web page, a system run on
LEPAS retrieves cloud masked AVHRR SST data from Oregon state and processes
them using SeaDAS.